


Viva La Vida or The Fool and All His Friends

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Don't worry he gets better, F/F, F/M, God these kids are just so stupid I want to write about that, I love them but they're not as stupid as the other four, M/M, Oblivious Jake English, The major character death is for the wealth of dirkapitations, neither jake nor jane is actually that into the other, the beta kids are more mentions, the strilondes are fire demons and the harleyenglishcrockerberts are sorcerers, the strilondes both notice but don't say anything bc they don't want to look selfish, they're just too stupid to talk about it, well more like non-confrontational
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22982263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Your name is Dirk Strider, and you are a fire demon of immense power. You sealed a pact with one Jane Crocker, the greatest sorceress of the current age, and heir to the prestigious position of Royal Sorcerer when Jade Harley bites it (no pun intended). There's one complication, though: Jake English, local dumbass. He's head-over-heels for Jane, and she's having serious thoughts about him. You've devised a series of tests for him to prove his devotion to her, and he's thrown himself into them with gusto. But just when things seem to be going alright, he summons you right out from under Jane's nose. And worse, he's playing dumb about it. You're going to have to put some of the ol' Strider stink on this whole situation-- without letting yourself get distracted by Jake's choice ass.
Relationships: Dirk Strider & Roxy Lalonde, Jake English & Roxy Lalonde, Jake English/Dirk Strider, Jane Crocker/Jake English (but only because they're all too stupid to actually communicate), Jane Crocker/Roxy Lalonde
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. >Dirk: have a situation

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Animus ex Machina](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21912748) by [Tomatograter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tomatograter/pseuds/Tomatograter). 



Your name is Dirk Strider and by God there’s an approximately fuckin enormous chance that this has all gone absolutely pear-shaped. One minute you’re discussing your plans for world domination with Jane Crocker, your sorceress and the only motherfucker in this world that can handle you, and the next minute you’re sitting nonchalantly on a stump in a fiery bog that you _literally_ just designed. 

“What’s going on?” you ask in a manner consistent with your pose on this bog-log. Which is to say, pretty friggin non-chalant. You do not ask it in a manner consistent with the 4 Non Blondes in their hit single _What’s Up?_ , although you’d be lying if you said it didn’t occur to you, because it did.

It also occurs to you that you are actually sitting, which might make a lesser fire demon react in a way that could be considered, by some, _chalant_ as shit, but the last time you even gave a badass chin-nod to chalant when passing it in a crowded scummy dive bar was when a certain young and buck toothed Crocker intercepted your totally rad suicidal swandive into a bog not unlike the one in which you find yourself currently. Except for the fire; that was an original Strider touch.

What wasn’t, though, is the man standing at the entrance to the bog grappling with one of your many centaur puppets. 

“Christ in a cracked tea kettle you equestrian motherfuckers sure do just keep getting tougher!” he yells as he wraps it in a chokehold. The puppet stands to full height, lifting him easily off the ground and causing him to wrap two enormous calves around its midsection. The juxtaposition of bulging, oiled muscles with the smooth, fibrous smoke making up the magical centaur puppet (by which you mean a centaur puppet specifically made of magic: obviously all centaurs are magical, and this bonkers magic attribute extends by association to puppets in their likeness) is so poetic that you almost allow yourself to regret not planning it that way. Of course, you knew Jane’s proclivities for the beefier sex were pretty much in line with your own, but you would have made the bitchin smoke centaurs anyway just because they look so fucking cool. 

There was no chance that this was not Jake English. You’ve never seen this fucker in the flesh before, but now you really can’t stop seeing his flesh. He’s nearly pantsless; a pair of short shorts sits under a pair of thigh holsters which seem almost laughably redundant strapped over his own strapped guns. What you mean to say is that he is shredded. He’s also working it as hard as possible; an obviously intentional tear across the back of his fitted tee shirt is missing any scar underneath but does show off his lats. If you had a human form, you are 100 percent certain you’d work your lats to peak performance, but they’d be lithe and graceful in comparison to this guy’s gratuitous muscle mass. 

Thinking this reminds you that you are actually sitting on a log, which you’re pretty certain requires the use of an ass. Ergo, you have an ass. You take a break from fondly regarding your creation as it struggles in English’s powerful grasp to check out your newfound facilities. Much to your chagrin, you are not as sleek and toned as you had expected, but rather you appear to be, how would you put it? Scrawny? Twinkish? Busted? Surely there are dark magics at work here, the kind you have not seen since you and Jane last matched wits with Madame Harley and the Lalonde demon. You briefly consider that she may be behind this, but quickly dismiss it. Surely Rose would have the basic fuckin decency to give you some points in hunk. 

You take a break from taking a break from fondly regarding your creation as it gets its ass kicked by the hunk in front of you. Then you stop doing that to stop taking a break from advancing the plot. Otherwise, your readers may stop giving a shit. 

“Alright old chap, I hate to do this to such a class sparring partner, but you’ve been a right thorn in my ass and it’s time for me to continue my adventure now!” English shouts, adjusting his grip on the puppet’s neck to spin a pistol out of his thigh holster. He pops two warning caps in the centaur’s plush, smokey ass and slides down its rapidly dissipating form as he spins the gun back into its holster like a sexy Revolver Ocelot. That is to say, just like Revolver Ocelot. 

“Mister English, I assume,” you say, although it sounded a lot cooler and less like complete horseshit in your head. 

Mister English sticks out a hand, which proceeds to absolutely crush the one you give him in response. “Well my reputation seems to precede me, which is fitting for a famous and accomplished adventurer such as myself, but please don’t take it the wrong way when I say I have no clue who in Sam’s entire fricking Hill you are!”

You have to say you’re enthralled so far. He really talks like this? To real people? You consider matching his energy, but then decide it would be completely and utterly exhausting, so you opt for your more casual, laid back speech pattern. 

“It’s probably best you keep it that way, bro. There’s a nonzero chance that…” You don’t mean to trail off. You _mean_ to say ‘There’s a nonzero chance that I have been put under a spell by a powerful sorcerer/ess which gives me this diminished form. Involving yourself with me would bring you under more fire than your incredible brawn and duel-wielded handguns can get you out of. Yes, I submit that your muscles truly are astounding, and I say so as a fellow owner of a powerful physique which has been cruelly deprived of me by a sorcerer who cannot be otherwise than at least equal to my own considerable power, hence the aforementioned danger to yourself, your ass, and your guns.’ None of that comes out, and you reflect that whoever put you in this wretched form must be preventing you from explaining your plight. The evil bastard. Instead, you opt to say “There’s a nonzero chance that I’m in a situation which I can surely handle on my own. No need for you to strut your prodigious ass into this and get it handed to you like a plush towel in the final atrium of a steamy bathhouse on Butler Island.” Nailed that shit. English will surely try to get involved and, deducing that your lacking physical build doesn’t match the raw confidence and chad energy you exude, work out the specifics of your curse almost immediately, allowing you to explain to him your plight.

What happens next takes you completely by surprise. “Well that sounds like one hell of a raw deal,” Jake says, “but I wish you the very best of luck! Even a novice adventurer like yourself I’m sure is chuffed as nuts to get out there and grab his quest by the short hairs and give it the ol’ clap!” You get the distinct impression that Jake has no idea he’s saying any of this out loud. He turns away from you into the bog. As he passes the stump you were sitting on, you remember the layout you designed for this level. You watch bemusedly as six more centaurs pop out of the swamp in front of Jake, baring their teeth and flexing their smokey arms. 

English considers them for a moment, no doubt sizing them up against his tree-trunk thighs, before his vapid grin dims with a twitch of his moustache. He mutters some inane early ‘20s slang which you assume he intersperses with mid-aughts curses and constructions before drawing both his handguns and blasting away at them. You turn away from the scene and reflect that things have indeed gone a bit pear-shaped. There really is no other way out of it. You decapitate your shitty human frame on one of the bog’s custom razor-wire vines and find yourself back in your cozy little candelabra in Jane’s castle. 

“I just met this English guy,” you tell her.

“Oh, you mean Jake?” she asks cheerily, apparently nonplussed by your sudden and unexplained disappearance. “Isn’t he swell?”

“Yeah, pretty fuckin swole,” you say. “This might be a problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dirk obviously prefers Post-Phantom Pain but Pre-Shadow Moses Ocelot.


	2. >Dirk: Mark one point for the glassware

This is almost certainly going to be a problem. There’s no way in hell it isn’t going to be a problem. But Jane can’t know that. She’s having her thoughts about this guy, after having met him while on an investigation under an alias for the express purpose of _avoiding_ would-be suitors. Jane told you his debonair attitude and dashing good looks swept her right off her gumshoed feet. After meeting Jake in person, you can easily assume that ‘debonair attitude’ meant he didn’t give her the time of day until she started hitting on him in order to squeeze some information out of him. You’ll be damned if you wouldn’t like to squeeze some information out of him, too, or at least get your turn to squeeze his ‘dashing good looks.’ Which is exactly why Jane can’t know you’re thirsting after this dude harder than a shipwrecked soul on the other end of the Butler Island archipelago. 

Speaking of butlers, Jane asks you to turn a burner on for her so she can prepare a spell ingredient. “Tell me about the situation. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had missed some crucial details in my first meeting with the man!”

Yeah, you wouldn’t be surprised either. You don’t tell her this. Instead, you tell her someone else knows why you’re making challenges for him to overcome.

“Someone else knows why we’re making challenges for him to overcome,” you say. “And if I were a bettin man, which I ain’t, not because I’m against gambling but because I’m literally an incorporeal being with no need for currency or really any possessions I could lay against a wager, I’d say they don’t like it all that much.”

“Oh?” Jane says, swirling a crucible above your flame, “Someone else with an eye on him and an inkling to settle him down?”

Yeah, you think, the worst possible scenario. “Maybe. It’s probably best if you do your sleuthing with discretion on this, though. Whoever it is, they’re trying to send a message, and I’m really feeling like leaving them on read.”

“Do you think we need to move? I don’t fancy letting them intimidate us either, but hell hath no wrath and all that.”

“Hell’ll hath to freeze over before I run from something like this. The trail we left for English won’t bring him here for another couple weeks at least--”

You are interrupted by a ding from the living room, as one of Jade’s enchanted vases lights up. Your own voice, magically generated to be a little lower and smoother (strictly to more easily distinguish it from your actual voice, lest it get confusing) announces that Jake English passed the Fire Swamp of Fifty Horses. 

“--thank you, Hal,” you say. “Make that one week. I didn’t expect him to Doom his way through that one.”

“Maybe we could rack our collective noggins some less... equine obstacles for him?” Jane suggests.

Hell no. “Hell no. I’ll make them bulletproof.”

Jane sighed. “I guess there’s no accounting for taste. Do you have any leads on who this mysterious malefactor might be?”

“It has to be someone powerful enough to transport me all the way to Belavhen and conjure a body for me on the way. Even if it was scrawny, twinkish, and busted.” You mutter this last bit, a departure from your usual perfectly-manicured salesman’s drawl. 

“Gacious!” Jane exclaims. “That sounds like something Miss Harley would be able to do, but why would she want to? She’s much too old for Jake…”

You are about to chime in that you’re pretty sure she’d have some other motive when Jane perks right up. “Well! I’ll go do some snooping.”

“Jane,” you say.

“Right! Discretion.” She produces a pair of Bugle Puss glasses out of her jacket pocket and flips them open. “Put together another few threads for Jake to follow. I’m worried he’s not totally on board with this damsel-in-an-ivory-tower business. Give him a chance to show a girl he’s worth it!”

She puts on the glasses and instantly morphs into an old, bearded man. The spell is complete; if you hadn’t just seen her change, and weren’t a totally stone-cold motherfucker, you might ask the man in front of you what the fuck he was doing in your house. Then Jane flashes her signature smile and rushes out the door. You let the corner of a smile cross your face as she goes. She’s the best wizard in the world, by a huge margin. That disguise would be entirely opaque, even to a telepath, if that telepath were blind and deaf. Jane’s a very powerful wizard, but a powerfully lousy actor. 

With Jane gone, you are left to your own evil devices. You plot your fucking brains out and scheme yourself into a malevolent stupor before getting down to the business of how to keep Jake away from Jane for a little longer. You tell yourself that the gusto with which you throw yourself into this task is purely selfless, as though you are the sole survivor left after an apocalyptic self-based armageddon. Just kicking through the ruins not even worried about picking up the splintered remains of your former self. Nothing but Crocker as far as the eye can see. 

You can tell that Jane needs some time to mull over this hunk. Clearly he can provide what she needs (a ass, those arms, that moustache, _et cetera_...) but you can’t blame her for wanting to establish herself first. English is obviously more than eager to tap that, as evidenced by his continued pursuit of the quests you’ve set up for him. You just have to keep him busy and horny for as long as it takes Jane to be ready to settle her ass down. 

“Hey Hal,” you call from across the room.

“Hello, Dirk. How can I assist you today?” You can feel the vase light up, as you are the one supplying this fucker’s magical energy. Perhaps he could be a little more cognizant of this, seeing as he does owe his pseudo-consciousness entirely to you. 

“Oh, you’re fixin to assist me today? What’s the occasion?” you ask. “To what do I owe this promised cessation of hostilities, and the possibility of getting through a single conversation with you without the infinite fucking prelude of snark and horseshittery?”

“Oh, father mine, forgive me my impudence, but it seems, to me, you are contributing… by my calculations, anyway… about nine hundred percent of the snark and most of the horseshittery,” Hal chatters inanely. You can just about hear his face bending into a smarmy little grin. Or at least you would if he had a face, which he doesn’t.

You have a face, though, and you might be contorting it in an expression of distaste at the moment, had you not expected exactly that genre of response from this asshole. “Just tell me where English is.”

“Oh, got a little taste of this guy’s bodacious fuckin good looks and now you’re asking me to perv on him for you? You should be ashamed, Dirk. I’m ashamed to be you!”

“If you’re me, then you’re perving on him already for your own vase desires,” you shoot back.

Hal seems taken aback. “I have to say, I didn’t anticipate you owning up to it like that. What would Jane have to say about all that, I wonder?”

“Hal, you are of course acutely aware that I am an extremely powerful fire demon, and you are in fact, as you keep reminding me, a reflection of my own consciousness that’s been removed from me by a highly sophisticated spell jointly created by none other than Jane Crocker and yours truly. In light of this fact, could you compute for me the odds that I am able to remove you from existence as an act of my own will?”

This shuts Hal up, further evidence that despite his insistence that he is you, the two of you are hells of different in your responses to being threatened. You wouldn’t have taken that shit lying down, and you know that he knows this. It would follow from that that he knows you are the alpha Dirk, and he is but a beta cuck version of you trapped in a shitty IKEA apartment decoration. You let him know that you know that he knows this. 

“You know that I know that you know that I am the alpha Dirk, and you are but a beta cuck version of me trapped in a shitty IKEA apartment decoration. You know that I know that you know that Jane knows this, and would never take your word over mine in an argument. And because of the rule of three I’ll just say that we both know how easy it would be for me to make you disappear in a tragic household accident. Those living in glass vases, and all that.”

Hal stays silent for a minute, and then starts talking quietly. It takes you longer than it should to realize that he’s not speaking in his own voice, but in yours. In fact, he’s not speaking in your voice, but replaying it back to you. And on top of that, you’re pretty damn sure he’s filtered your voice to sound even higher-pitched than it is in reality. Hal laughs as he ends the recording with a squeaky “I’m a beta cuck!” in your own voice. The editing quality is poor, and it’s obvious that the ‘beta cuck’ didn’t follow the first two words, so you’re not in the least offended by it.

“Jane loves me, Dirk. But the downside of being you is that I can’t show all of this beautiful blackmail I have to her without besmirching my own pristine reputation. Jake English is 12 leagues northeast of Belavhen along the 210th azimuth. He’s nearing your Tower of Thundering Mustangs.”

You promise yourself that someday you really are going to melt him down into a decorative plate. “Thank you, Hal. I appreciate you not making me deal with the usual amount of inane back-and-forth that we so often fall into.”

“I’m a beta cuck!” your own edited voice calls back.


End file.
